All stakeholders are flexible but some are more flexible than others – external stakeholder influence: a case study experience

This paper concerns an innovative and current real-world UK Government IS project aimed at improving the administration and management of the EC’s Agricultural Policy across the region. Although the flexibility of core stakeholders is principal to the negotiation of systems requirements and key to successful development, for this interpretive case study the inflexibility of the EC, as core stakeholders and external regulators, had a critical impact upon the project that impeded a successful outcome that has implications for practice. This paper presents a perspective gained through the empirical setting that provides evidential insights into the difficulties experienced by exploring the dynamics of the factors involved. It presents the real-life context, experiences and commentary that provide meaningful insight and validity to the findings. The aim is not to present another model, framework or proposal to address this issue but rather through the analysis of the data gathered to offer ‘rich insight’ and increase the understanding of such difficulties from which lessons can be drawn. Thus there is no one question that can be answered but rather it is important to draw upon such research experiences so that validated conclusions can inform the IS domain